Tour tech: Giro get their thinking hats on to save Prologue seconds

Everyone's busy farming out the pre-Tour press releases and now it's Giro's turn: here's a sneak preview of their new TT helmet, decked out in Livestrong colours, that Astana will be wearing at the prologue. The helmet is so new that it doesn't have a name yet (suggestions below) so we'll refer to it by its project code, the easy-on-the-tongue G-284-TT.

Giro claim that their boffins tell them that for every 100g of drag saved a pro rider can save 46 seconds over a 40km time trial. They don't say what this new helmet actually does save in terms of drag, but the official line is that "although the helmet is still within the it’s development stages and is work-in-progress, it offers such an aerodynamic advantage already that it would be foolish not to use in this year’s Prologue"

There's lots of talk on Giro's video about the helmet's development (which is worth a watch if you like wind tunnels and flow tanks and such) about the helmet being 'adaptable to different riding styles' - we're not sure what this means in practice but it looks most likely that there's a modular rear section which can take a variety of different shaped end pieces to better fit to your position. We're waiting for confirmation on that though.

Dave is a founding father of road.cc and responsible for kicking the server when it breaks. In a previous life he was a graphic designer but he's also a three-time Mountain Bike Bog Snorkelling world champion, and remains unbeaten through the bog. Dave rides all sorts of bikes but tends to prefer metal ones. He's getting old is why.

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Jon Burrage[997 posts]8 years ago

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could call it 'the seagull'...judging by the shape of the extreme rear on the helmet. Got to say I prefer the look of previous giro helmets.

dave do you think that ruling will be workable? As others have said, surely it will lead to a slow down in technological advances and design ideas for cycling when new bits cant be tested in race situations before being marketted to us mere mortals.

If it's implemented it'll be less of a slowdown and more of a dead stop to r&d for road bikes and kit.

What it might lead to is more of that effort being funneled into Tri bikes and kit. At the moment even though uci rules don't apply in triathalon most triathletes are riding uci legal bikes which are less aero than they would be if they didn't conform to the uci regs.

There's a way to go yet, but my feeling is that the UCI haven't thought this through.